Suspected serial killer in custody
DNA links man to deaths of at least 3 Daytona Beach women
A suspected serial killer linked to the deaths of at least three women more than a decade ago in Daytona Beach was arrested over the weekend in South Florida, law enforcement officials announced Monday.
Robert Tyrone Hayes, 37, was tied to the Central Florida killings after a similar 2016 homicide in Palm Beach, Daytona Beach police Chief Craig Capri told reporters at a news conference.
As of Monday, Hayes had only been arrested in the Palm Beach County case, Capri said. However, DNA evidence collected in that killing matched samples from the Daytona Beach homicides, he said.
“At this point in time, we have not charged him yet with ours, but we have linked him with forensic evidence to three of our murder victims,” said Capri, who called Hayes a “disgusting serial killer.”
Police have worked more than a decade to solve the killings of LaQuetta Gunther, Julie Ann Green and Iwana Patton, whose bodies were found in Daytona Beach between 2005 and 2006. Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who was previously police chief for Daytona Beach, said Monday he had spoken to one of the victims’ family members to convey the long-awaited news.
“They are absolutely ecstatic,” he said. “They didn’t think they’d be alive to see this day come.”
A bloody trail
The killings began in the waning days of 2005.
That’s when Gunther was last seen alive. The 45-year-old painter and labor hall worker left the Daytona Beach home of her best friend, Stacey Dittmer, on
Christmas Eve, promising to return in a few hours so they could complete a holiday tradition of cooking a full Christmas dinner together.
Her partially nude body was found later in an alley on North Street. She had a bullet through the back of her head.
Green’s body was found at a construction site off LPGA Boulevard on Jan. 14, 2006. She, too, had been shot in the head.
A Jacksonville native with two daughters, Green, 34, was among a group of friends who had signed a poster that was hung in Gunther’s memory in the alley where she was found.
They also both frequented Willie’ Place, a bar on Madison Avenue.
Patton, a 35-year-old nursing assistant who lived in Holly Hill, was found dead off a dirt path near Williamson Boulevard and Mason Avenue the following month.
In addition to proximity, police said the three women were linked by a history of prostitution.
The fourth woman whose death has over the years been attributed to the same killer, Stacey Gage, did not have a prostitution record but died under similar circumstances.
The 30-year-old woman was found near Hancock Boulevard on Jan. 2, 2008.
“We don’t know at this point in time if it’s related,” Capri said Monday of Gage’s killing. “We’re still investigating that.”
The break in the case came after another slaying across the state: On March 7, 2016, a road crew worker found the body of a nude woman, later identified as 32-year-old Rachel Elizabeth Bey, along State Road 710 in Jupiter.
DNA match leads to arrest
An autopsy determined that Bey had been strangled. Evidence near her body — including drag marks and a lack of blood — suggested that the killing had happened elsewhere. She showed signs of having been beaten, including fractures to her jaw and broken teeth.
“There were also obvious injuries about her hands and arms that could be consistent with defensive injuries,” a probable cause affidavit said.
Investigators determined that Bey was a prostitute who operated in West Palm Beach. She had last been seen by a close friend the same day her body was found, walking near Dixie Highway about 2 a.m.
DNA from semen recovered from Bey during an autopsy, as well as a swab of one of Bey’s hands, drew a match to two of the three Daytona Beach cold cases. Investigators soon zeroed in on Hayes, who had lived in Daytona Beach during the period of the homicides there and, in 2016, about a mile from where Bey was last seen alive.
On Sept. 13, agents with a Palm Beach sheriff’s fugitive task force were watching Hayes as he smoked and discarded a cigarette while waiting for a bus near his home. They collected the butt and had it processed for DNA — finding a match to Bey’s case, as well as those in Daytona Beach, the affidavit said.
Hayes had been questioned during the initial investigation of the Daytona Beach killings. He had bought a gun the same month as Gunther’s death — .40 caliber, the same as that killed her — but told detectives when interviewed several months later he had given it to his mother, according to the affidavit.
However, a year after Gunther’s killing, he reported a .40 caliber gun stolen from his vehicle in Riviera Beach.
As officials announced Hayes’ arrest Monday, State Attorney R.J. Larizza of the 7th Judicial Circuit, which includes Volusia County, praised detectives for their diligent work pursuing the challenging case and their use of modern technology to crack it.
“We are truly in a brave new world, and we have brave folks that are helping put these cases together,” he said.